I've lived with complete strangers and the mistake I made was joining people who were not in my age range, mine were too young. So make sure you find people around your age or even a bit older. Avoid living with people who are in their early 20s and party all the time, people who for living away from home is a novelty. What you want are working/studying people who take their lives seriously.

Also I recommend having an alternate situation as a backup in case things go south, maybe a friend who would let you move in temporarily until you find something else.

I'm currently living with three girls (including my girlfriend) who I have all known for at least a year, which really helps with everyday business. I recommend like Dais and Crusher have said, don't try getting with anyone as it will cause massive rifts and really make things awkward.

Try and keep things relatively sane, ensure you know what people like and don't like and just ensure things are overall a nice environment. Basically you can be either really lucky with share housing, or very unlucky and have crappy people who can't clean after themselves.

We found our house by just walking by and seeing it for rent, and we actually don't go through a real estate, just the landlord themselves.

Never accept a place before seeing it. Ask what the current setup for food/fridge/cleaning/car park. Does rent include bills? Do they have internet? Who pays what? Ask what other people do for a living, I think this always gives you an idea of what type of person they are.

There's always one housemate that is a pain in the ass. Doesn't clean after themselves, doesnt do house chores. Do not be that person. If you are that person, try to change.

UQ was running a student rental search site from 03 to around 08 when I last looked at it, I'm unsure if this is it re-made http://uqrentals.com.au/ (just do the search up the top, no login needed).

The first thing I did when I finished school was get the f*** away from my crazy christian family who were forcing me to go to churches and whatnot, and so lived in a half dozen shared houses over the next decade. Basically, if quiet is your thing, look for people who want quiet. They'll usually say. My best flatmates were normally from asia or the asia pacific, they seemed to have a tonne of money and wanted to not take a single risk for their entire time in Australia. :P

Make sure that you clean, especially dishes, flatmates who don't clean are balls. Get a detergent handle brush thing and always wash everything immediately before s*** settles, and you'll always be good. You can generally throw bleach on everything in bathrooms and run away if you're lazy like me.

You can get places from $80 a week, but realistically for a half decent place, you may be looking at closer to $150 a week (before bills), or even higher. Keep in mind when other people are using the net before raping it with torrents, and if you have a quota (not that it's a big deal these days), try not to get your entire house's internet shaped... It's the worst thing ever for a house of students trying to sign up to classes or something before the preferred spots are taken, or submitting assignments.

Around December to January a s***tonne of student accommodations open up, due to being between semesters. Closer to the end, a lot of share houses probably begin to take structure and then will be posting that they're looking for more people. If you walk around a uni suburb, you can normally find a ton of advertisements looking for flatmates in bus stops.

Also avoid cheap places that are listed like a dozen times, they're generally monstrosity buildings that are designed to cram a jillion students in, just run by somebody turning a profit from it somehow. You want to rent alongside people who are generally just looking for one more, and you also may be required to go onto the lease, which means that the rest of you have to pick it up if somebody else leaves, or break the lease and have that against you in the future. If everybody else leaves, it can leave you pretty screwed. It's not as likely that you'll find a replacement during semester.

If you reckon that you can handle a full lease period without letting people down, you can probably look for PhD students who have been doing it for a half decade and are used to the whole situation. Age differences can make things weirder though.

You'll generally need to pay a 4 week bond (sometimes 8, sometimes 2) before signing up. The rental association is supposed to hold that, not your landlord or flatmates, though you generally pay at the real estate agent's office.

I've been living in share houses/flats with friends and randoms since 2005.

London's probably got much more of a share scene then Brisbane, not sure, it's very commonplace over here. There's loads of room rental websites and the like to find rooms.

Having moved into many flat shares with randoms and gotten randoms into existing flatshares numerous times, I've only ever had 1 bad experience with a a****** french dude, and I kicked him out.

General advice would be:

-Make sure the people are in a similar age range, that helps to ensure compatibility.-Always meet them first and have a chat, see if you get on, ask lots of questions about their lifestyle.-Go for quiet, well mannered peeps, especially with girls - you don't to live with drama queens!-Always check out the house/flat facilities, check everything.-I've generally lived with all girls or an even balance of girls/guys. Girls are not as clean as you think but its much nicer then dude caves.-Be tolerant/considerate and generally if they're good peeps they will be too.-Don't ever be passive agressive (leaving notes), if there's a problem just talk it out.

Living with other people requires a certain amount of tolerance of little annoying things, you just gots to deal with it.

And of course, don't screw the crew!! I've done this, it ended horribly.